(Last words heard on War’s breakout album All Day Music, which closes on an early, raw, live version of “Me and Baby Brother”)

Claiming the Space…

Bourgeois dreams were coming to fruition in Black America in the early 70s. The cold-blooded economic planning that would keep the ghetto the ghetto wherever it was found (mostly in black-demo big cities, the dual-demo rural south, white demo Appalachia and the about-to-be Rust Belt) was already clicking into place, but there were still cracks in the new facade where the light could be glimpsed shining through from the Promised Land.

War, the greatest American band of the decade (and, with the original Byrds, and Louis Armstrong’s Hot Fives and Sevens, the most Cosmic of the American Century–“greatest” is another argument), lived and breathed in those cracks…and stomped all over that facade.

Their ability to stomp has, not surprisingly in a Narrative defined almost entirely by college-bound white boys who can’t dance, overshadowed their gift for living and breathing, of which “All Day Music” was the first, foundational, example.

It was their first crossover hit (if you don’t count their Burn-Down-the-Cornfield backing of Eric Burdon on “Spill the Wine”). It wasn’t huge, but it made Top 40, and kicked off a string of harder-edged singles that were, perhaps paradoxically, much bigger. “Slippin’ Into Darkness,” “The World is a Ghetto,” “Cisco Kid,” “Why Can’t We Be Friends,” “Me and Baby Brother,” “Low Rider” Really, the titles are all you need.

Contrasted to all that–and I think the contrast wasn’t just deliberate, but a setup–“All Day Music” represents what sounds at first like a comforting, almost bucolic vision, albeit with a hint of carrying on a tradition of Black America finding peace in unlikely places that made it a natural sequel to the Drifters’ “Under the Boardwalk.”

But where “Under the Boardwalk” (recorded under extraordinary circumstances when lead singer Rudy Lewis was killed in a car accident the day before the planned session and Johnny Moore had to step into his place to provide that durable R&B group/brand with its last Top Ten pop hit), was written as a white fantasy for a black group to sing, “All Day Music” was written by black men to sing for themselves.

Great as “Under the Boardwalk” is–I wouldn’t argue if you said it was a greater record than “All Day Music”–that’s not a distinction without a difference.

Neither was the space War intended to claim: Not a temporary space under the boardwalk at Coney Island, as accessible to Black America as any other integrated space, but the broad scope of urban and suburban life in early 70s’ Los Angeles.

Down at the beach, or a party in town meant something different in L.A., with its long and notorious history of virulent racist policing–a theme War would return to over and again–than it did back east (where racist policing was hardly unknown), or even in the Deep South (where, except for a few spots in Florida, beaches tend to be either resort spots or hideaways, not part of the everyday social fabric that comes with the term Southern California).

And once you know that, Making love or just riding around or Let’s have a picnic, go to the park/Rolling in the grass til long after dark, take on a whole new dimension–a dimension Black America had never really felt free to grant itself before and can hardly take for granted even now.

Taken that way–as career starter, tone setter, vision definer–“All Day Music” may have been even bolder than War’s more obviously bold records, which were only the boldest of their era.

Strange, then, that “All Day Music” and “Summer” (from 1976), the records which bracketed the band’s hit-making run on the Pop Charts, its true bond with White America–a run that cemented their now-forgotten status as the band who were both asking the questions that needed answering and providing a glimpse of what lay on the other side of implementing the human-size solutions which then seemed so near to hand–defined the promise of the coming day that seemed so far away in “Slippin’ Into Darkness” or “The World is a Ghetto” or “Me and Baby Brother.”

That the day never quite came, that progress stalled and then, as progress will, splintered, deepens the melancholy tone these records–and, as a career starter, a statement of purpose, “All Day Music” in particular–only hinted at when they were on the radio.

The peace “All Day Music” meant to promote without taking anything for granted, shattered in the crack-filled, CIA-run, eighties that War had promised lay on the other side of failing to reach an understanding, and which, almost inevitably, produced first NWA, then Ice Cube, then Ice Cube’s natural sequel to “All Day Music”…

…by which time, the dream of permanence War had been close enough to reach out and touch had been reduced to Thinkin’ will I live another twenty-four and Today I didn’t even have to use my AK, bleeding in and out of an air of paranoia that couldn’t be escaped for even a moment. Running in fear all day, and being thankful the worst fear hadn’t been realized for a whole day, had replaced listening to music all day.